Behind the lens.
Huka Falls is a thunderous 11 metre high waterfall on the Waikato river just north of lake Taupo. While 11 metres may not be terribly high as far as waterfalls go it makes up for it in power. 220,000 litres of water rushes over it every second, by my calculations thats enough water to fill nearly 620,000 coke cans (or two olympic size swimming pools).
Huka falls has always been a special place for me. I have family in Turangi (a town at the southern end of lake Taupo) whom we'd visit often when I was a child. My parents must be sick of this place as the falls were always a requested (and by requested I mean demanded) stop on the way.
My wife and I visited here with a couple of friends a while ago as part of a wee road trip. Mostly to take a photo or two and also to show our Italian friend what he was missing by living in Australia instead of New Zealand
The final image is a blend of two shots, as my waterfall pictures often are. An over exposed image for the river and background, in fact almost the whole image is that one over exposed shot. This shot was dropped two stops so it looked correctly exposed (remember, it's good to drop an over exposed image, provided you haven't blown any important highlights). I almost solely used this image but decided that the waterfall itself had a bit more definition from the shorter 0.4sec exposure so slotted that in instead.
The colour of the water in this part of the world is ridiculous. Apart from a subtle boost in contrast and saturation (and the blurring of the water from the slow shutter speed) that's pretty much how it looks! The colour also really changes depending on if and how the sunlight is hitting it. You can see in the behind the lens shot, which was taken while it was cloudy, that the water is a much more muted blue colour.
Surreal Waikato. 30mm | 2.5 sec | f16 | ISO100